CVK
The Contra Costa Times interviews Emily Raboteau, author of the newly released novel, The Professor’s Daughter. The article is pretty cheesy (the doll metaphor they start off with is STRAIGHT out of “Imitation of Life”) but the book sounds good. Like the novel’s protagonist, Raboteau is a young biracial woman. Here’s part of the Publisher’s […]

CVK
Mariah Carey graces the cover of Essence’s April issue. Though the coverline takes a one-drop stance (”Mariah Carey: America’s Most Misunderstood Black Woman”), the article inside deals almost completely with her mixed identity, and makes for pretty interesting reading. Here are some excerpts:
So this isn’t a twenty-first-century version of Imitation of Life. Still, race and […]

JC
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports on the shutting down of Panzerfaust. This white-supremacy record label has gotten a lot of attention for their proactive distribution of hateful anti-ethnic messages to teenagers across the country. In September, Panzerfaust announced plans to pass out 100,000 copies of a “pro-white sampler CD.” Now they are in the […]

CVK
The Charlotte Observer has an article by Jim Morrill about the revelation that he had black ancestors, and his quest to find out more about his family history:
When I was about 30, my mother confided a secret: My great-grandmother — the mother of my dad’s father — was black.Growing up with blond hair and blue […]

CVK
The LA Times reviews renowned black film historian Donald Bogle’s new book Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood:
Heavyset and dark-skinned, with a beatific smile and nurturing demeanor, Louise Beavers forged a career playing domestic servants in such films as “Imitation of Life” (1934) and the 1950s TV show “Beulah.” But the real […]

CVK
The New York Times reviews “Dear Senator,” the new memoir by Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the illegitimate biracial daughter of the late segregationist Strom Thurmond. The review does little to offset the widespread impression of Ms. Washington-Williams as…how do I put this…a total pushover?
Now she also has a ghostwriter: William Stadiem, who recently made himself […]

CVK
The Detroit Free Press profiles Arbelia Wood, possibly the world’s oldest woman at age 119. Wood is biracial, and has a familiar, but still sad family history:
According to family lore, in the mid-1880s in Mississippi a white farmer gave an ultimatum to a sharecropper and daughter of former slaves: Sleep with him or leave. Muggie […]